With as many cookbooks as I tend to bury my head in, you’d think I’d be better at spotting a winner right out of the gates. But it took a second set of eyes to reveal the brilliance in Vegan Eats World, the new title from bestselling vegan cookbook author Terry Hope Romero.

Vegan Eats World by Terry Hope Romero

I have a bad habit of scooping up all the foodie finds on the new release shelf at the library, which means at any given moment I probably have about a dozen more titles on the shelf than I can get to. Efficient? No, of course not. But when the buffet is both free and all-you-can-eat, self control can be a challenge. I paid about a week’s worth of late fees on Vegan Eats World before returning it unopened along with a few other tomes.

Fortunately, my wife is a far more skilled scholar, and seldom lets any book collect dust. When she scooped this one back up the next weekend, we were enjoying a meal of steamed tofu-stuffed buns and kimchi stew that evening.

Peek-a-bao

Romero plays culinary tour guide on a romp across the globe that sees scores of distinctive dishes filtered through a vegan spyglass, resulting in a collection that can see recipes like black-eyed pea patties and a Moroccan-style lemon braised tempeh sharing the same page.

We’ve cooked through about a dozen entries including a couple variations on crepes featuring coconut milk or chickpea flour, a hearty borscht beefed up with seitan and an earthy Mediterranean meal of stewed fava beans called Ful Medames. The success rate and happy bellies quickly led to my wife plunking down a few bucks to buy her own copy.

It would be inaccurate to call these recipes ‘simple,’ but there’s nothing terribly difficult in any of the preparations, some of which call for a dozen or more ingredients. Romero leaves little to chance, and every recipe is explained in great detail, yet the procedures remain fairly intuitive. Sesame Panko Tempeh Cutlets, for example, are broken down into three separate lists for the marinated tempeh, the coating that goes on it and lastly the array of garnishes that accompany the dish. While it looks like a lot to tackle, I found these easy to assemble, surprisingly crispy for a baked breading and requiring less than 15 minutes of active working time.

Romero composes recipes in a way that encourage experimentation, which is quite helpful considering some specialty vegan ingredients like vital wheat gluten flour can be tricky to hunt down if you don’t know where to look. Possible toppings for a ramen soup featuring a subtle but soulful broth of miso and soymilk range from corn kernels to flaked sheets of nori. I settled on broccoli and toasted peanuts, neither of which were suggested, but both of which worked fine.

Perhaps the greatest success Romero delivers is in making an interesting variety of vegan recipes accessible to the everyday home cook. Many of these dishes are the kind of thing you’d want to eat just because your palate was feeling curious, not out of adherence to any specific diet. And while I’m certainly not giving up the ribeye steaks anytime soon, Vegan Eats World is doing a great job of making sure I enjoy eating my veggies between those indulgences.

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